Sunday, 16 October 2016

A British Stand-off, an Unbridged Divide - and Why it's Time for Cycle Campaigners to Change the Conversation

There was something almost endearingly British about the standoff. In a typical autumnal light drizzle last Saturday in Swiss Cottage, North London, a group of other cyclists and I stood listening to speeches in support of the building of Cycle Superhighway 11, a planned segregated bike route from London’s West End, through Regent’s Park and up to the point where we were standing. Then, a demonstration against the plan arrived. Participants in the two demonstrations did some mild chanting at each other. Afterwards, we went our separate ways.

Protesters against CS11 meet its supporters, in Swiss Cottage:
a very British stand-off

But, however mild-mannered the two demonstrations at Swiss Cottage might have been, there has been no disguising in the past weeks that demonstrators like those opposing CS11 are growing increasingly vocal in many parts of the developed world. From Community Board meetings in Brooklyn to the pages of daily newspapers in the UK, there have been noisy complaints that newly-introduced or planned cycling facilities are a tyrannical imposition by unfeeling authorities out of touch with the feelings of ordinary people.

The UK’s Daily Mail two weeks ago produced the most eye-catching manifestation of the phenomenon, devoting a double-page spread to what it called “cycle lane lunacy,” which it said was “paralysing Britain”. However, there have been plenty of other examples. The Community Board that oversees planning issues in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and surrounding areas is preparing for a meeting where some locals are expected to vent their near-apoplexy over the Citibike bikeshare system’s arrival in their neighbourhood. Local councillors in Ayr, in the West of Scotland, have voted, under pressure from drivers, to remove the town’s only significant protected bike lane.

A cyclist and motorists in Regent's Park: a powerful
illustration of the arrangements the anti-CS11 campaigners
are fighting to preserve

Yet the cycling sceptics and supporters seem as incapable of meaningful communication as the two groups shouting at each other last Saturday morning. The motorists’ side complains that bike lanes often look empty. Cyclists argue that just shows cycling’s efficiency. Motorists complain that cyclists don’t pay “road tax,” as they do. Cyclists reply that vehicle excise duty in the UK has not been a hypothecated tax for many decades. Motorists complain that congestion is growing worse. Cyclists retort that the people complaining are themselves the traffic. My mind turned, as I rode home from Swiss Cottage, to whether there is some way to narrow this currently apparently unbridgeable divide.

A couple of incidents have highlighted to me the width of the communication gap. The first was on September 23 when, after I published in my day job a piece about the future of London’s roads, a former colleague wrote to me. He questioned whether it could possibly be true, as I had written in the piece, that some London roads with cycle superhighways were carrying more people per hour in rush hours than they were before the superhighways were put in place. He also asserted that cycling was, in fact, far more dangerous than people admitted and that, anyway, only the young and fit could do it.

Morning rush-hour traffic on the north-south superhighway:
no, there's no way this street's carried more people since the
segregated bike path went in

Then, two weeks ago, a fellow guest at a dinner party asked me how I’d found my just-finished four years in New York. Struggling to sum up the wealth of experience, I said that New York drivers weren’t terribly nice to cyclists. “But isn’t that how everyone feels?” he blurted out, before looking mortified as it dawned on him that I was, in fact, a cyclist.

The two incidents reminded me that cyclists, for most people, seem like a strange, alien species, taking unfathomable risks yet somehow eager to suck other, new people into participating in their strange mode of transport. The reminder was all the more stark because it was clear that neither of my interlocutors were people of ill will. They thought their frustration over growing cyclist numbers and efforts to facilitate cycling was simple common sense.

It is unsurprising to me that the many people who hold such views see dedicating road space that was previously mainly used by motor vehicles to cycling as a strange, ideologically extreme act. The Swiss Cottage demonstrators were portraying Transport for London’s determination to put in more facilities to encourage cycling as a bizarre, politically-driven effort to punish ordinary people. For many New Yorkers, the notion that a person might ride a bike to work is entirely crazy. That bikes to allow people to do so are now taking up what used to be their normal parking space must seem like a personal insult.

Drivers in a traffic jam by an empty bit of superhighway:
all, I'm sure, would be calmed to learn they're not paying
road tax.

Yet the response from many cycling advocates could be calculated to heighten the irritation, rather than calming it. For example, cycling activists often retort when drivers complain that cyclists pay no “road tax” that the UK abolished its hypothecated road tax - whose proceeds all went to road building and maintenance - in 1937. While the point is accurate, It is also a prissy, know-it-all one. Like many such responses, it deliberately misses the thrust of what cycling’s critics are trying to say - in this case, that they feel their transport choices are heavily taxed and they cannot see why others should use the same space for free.

It would make far more sense to point out that, while motoring is indeed heavily taxed in the UK, the taxes still fall short of covering the full external costs of the pollution, congestion, crashes and other side-effects. The argument is still clearer in the United States, where no state’s taxes on motoring cover even the annual cost of road maintenance. A tax-paying cyclist is, consequently, both saving the neighbouring drivers money and, if he or she previously drove a car, reducing the burden on taxpayers.

Cycling campaigners end up deploying plenty of other similar “well, actually” arguments about the terms of the debate, rather than the substance. There was a striking example in the last week when Quentin Wilson, a campaigner to shift even more of the burden for motoring onto ordinary taxpayers, tweeted a picture of the most westerly current section of London’s east-west cycle superhighway, just off Parliament Square. “Great new cycle lane but where are the cyclists?” he wrote above a picture of the empty lane.

A group of tourists refutes Quentin Wilson's contention this
bike lane goes unused - but also my fellow cyclists' claim
it's not open

Many cycling advocates accused Wilson of bad faith, responding with pictures facing in the other direction, showing a barrier that marks the end of the superhighway. I saw several people tweet with an excited, “gotcha” tone that the lane wasn’t (actually) even open yet.

I’d far rather that activists had pointed out the facts about the section of cycle track in question - and addressed the underlying issue. The section is lightly used because it’s short and doesn’t yet link to any other part of the cycle network. While I’ve used it several times myself, I have also bypassed it sometimes as inconvenient. It would, in addition, be worthwhile pointing out that the superhighways are new, incomplete and that people’s travel patterns always take a while to change after changes to infrastructure.

The Wilson case was one of a worrying number where I’ve seen cycling advocates on Twitter and Facebook accusing opponents of something close to false consciousness. Many seem reluctant to accept, for example, that the new cycle superhighways are currently lightly used outside rush hours or that, yes, motor traffic congestion really is growing worse. Yet I ride frequently on the superhighways outside rush hours and encounter few other cyclists. Arguments that accepted these points, explained what was going on and explained why cycling facilities can help to resolve the problems would be far more compelling.

A rider uses the Southwark Bridge bike lane, one of those
singled out in the Daily Mail for paralysing Britain

The problem mirrors developments in the contemporary, polarised political scenes on both sides of the Atlantic. The echo chamber of Twitter feeds and Facebook pages full of like-minded people is gradually alienating many people from the idea that any sincere person could disagree with his or her point of view.

Such echo chambers encourage their inhabitants to feel particularly enraged at my fellow journalists. One Facebook thread I saw recently discussed how users might punish a reporter who had, the thread’s originator claimed, lied through the heinous act of reporting on the anti-cycling views of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Yesterday, I saw two normally sensible Twitter users discussing how a well-regarded reporter who happens to write critically about cycling must be secretly in some sinister anti-cycling group’s pay. This afternoon, I’ve seen on Twitter a suggestion that an anti-cycling editorial in the Sunday Times might be a sign of a “concerted media campaign building”.

Sure, this space in Vauxhall is being very
well used: but how interesting is it to point
that out?

This imagining of sinister, hidden agendas behind newspaper articles betrays a frustrating lack of understanding of how actual journalists work. While I understand the London Taxi Drivers’ Association may have undertaken some lobbying and I know that some business groups oppose new cycling provision, it is naive and silly to imagine that reporters automatically bend to obvious efforts to influence them.

Nearly every reporter I know is driven by a desire to spot developing trends and to paint a picture of the world that will strike his or her readers as true and illuminating. Cycling campaigners should be far more concerned that large numbers of journalists are independently detecting a mood to dismantle or halt progress on cycling and far less concerned with finding a hidden force behind it.The truth, after all, is that progress on both sides of the Atlantic is fragile. There are strong reactionary movements in parts of Europe and North America.

Many people see provision for cycling as part of a suspect, politically-correct effort to take away their cars. Governments and local authorities have often seemed sheepish about promoting their efforts to support cycling. The arguments for cycling - that it is more space-efficient than motor vehicles, that it causes no pollution, that it costs little to provide for and promotes health - are so obvious as to seem trite. Cycle campaigners would be better, it seems to me, to admit they have a vision for the future that’s different from that of their opponents and argue for their vision’s superiority.

My ride home from Swiss Cottage made clear the costs of failing to get across the case for cycling. Wanting to see progress on the next sections of the east-west superhighway, I took a route through Hyde Park. I at first enjoyed riding down a completed superhighway section down the park’s western end. But then, abruptly, I not only came to the end of the open superhighway but encountered an unannounced closure of the whole southern road through the park.

After my queries about a route for cyclists round the closure drew blank looks from park staff, I instead headed reluctantly out onto the streets of Kensington, one of London’s least cycle-friendly areas. As I did so, the driver of a large Range Rover edged threateningly close to me. When that failed to elicit whatever panicked response the driver was seeking, he leaned long and hard on the vehicle’s horn, issuing a depressing reminder of where real power on the UK’s roads currently lies.

34 comments:

Very instructive post. We too often forget whom we are trying to convince, and effective ways of doing it.

At risk of entirely proving the point of your article, could I address the question of the whether cycleways are used outside peak hours? I've done a handful of short counts myself on Embankment at around 2 p.m. on a weekday in a variety of weathers and have found between 100 and 300 bikes per hour use it at that time. Not a count to scientific standards of course but it is indicative that off-peak usage isn't as light as all that.

I appreciate this point won't help at all in the situations you describe, but I suppose I'm just saying that if even you see them as lightly used off-peak we'll definitely have to work hard to convince someone who's instinctively hostile to cycleways that they do in fact see respectable off-peak use (or that it doesn't matter for now).

You're right those are reasonable use levels, though they're obviously well below the several thousand an hour recorded in peak time at Blackfriars Bridge. I guess my point is really that a lot of the time the cycle tracks look fairly empty and I often feel a bit uncomfortable seeing a lightly-used cycle track next to a long line of standing traffic. I think the devotion of space to cycle tracks is absolutely justifiable. But I'm also not surprised that drivers who've spent minimal time thinking about it get angry.

Sometimes journalists do just bend to obvious efforts to influence them - mostly when that effort comes from people close to the newspaper's editors/proprietors. Remember the Evening Standard campaign against Westminster's parking changes 4/5 years ago? Every journalist on that paper was railroaded into writing something on parking. Similarly now, with the Evening Standard and its uncritical attitude to the Garden Bridge, which has played a significant part in allowing that mess to continue. When this happens it really isn't journalists with an ear to the ground. It's rich people reaching out to their friends to make the right noise, and leading the public debate not following it..

I wasn't around for the parking charges incident that you describe, so I can't speak to what went on in that case. But the case of the Garden Bridge and the Evening Standard makes some of my case. While there is a strong perception that the Standard's editorial line on the project has infected its reporting, the Standard still ran a detailed report on the National Audit Office's highly critical report on the bridge last week: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/garden-bridge-government-agrees-to-fund-project-despite-warning-over-value-for-money-a3365931.html This reiterates what I say in the post and what I've been trying to say to people since via Twitter: that reporters are ultimately responsible to their readers and have to maintain their confidence. What's shocking about some of the recent kowtowing of the Telegraph, for example, to advertisers is that it breaches this cardinal principle.

News organisations clearly have cultures and news editors will have an idea of what makes a good story, what doesn't, what seems to be true and which issues should be given prominence. This produces some very distinctive editorial cultures, such as that of the Mail or Express. But the process is nothing like as crude or simplistic as much of the rhetoric suggests.

Further to the point above about the Evening Standard and its reporting on the Garden Bridge project, it's worth considering how its journalists write about the project might be tempered by the fact that the ES Russian oligarch owner is also the project's governor. The article you linked to still leads with a positive headline and looks like a sop to deflect suspicion. A report in the Guardian about the same time was much less gung ho about it.

I don't honestly see that a headline that says, "Garden Bridge: Government agrees to fund London Thames crossing despite value for money warning" is in any way positive. It's above a report about how the Department for Transport provided funding to the project despite warnings it wasn't a good use of funds. The headline seems to me a straightforward reflection of that. Also, I'm uncomfortable with the idea that one dismisses evidence that doesn't fit one's narrative by attributing ulterior motives to the people one's observing. My contention - that most newspaper reporters and editors feel their primary obligation is to reflect a view of the world that's convincing to readers - fits the evidence here better.

I haven't looked in great detail at the Evening Standard's coverage of the Garden Bridge. Clearly, reporters and editors tend to be aware of the interests of higher-up people. But you really shouldn't underestimate how bitterly cynical most newspaper reporters and editors are about pretty much everything, particularly their bosses. Skewering people's pretensions is the whole point of the job.

Here in Edinburgh there are concerted efforts to block an east west cycle route in the Roseburn area (near Haymarket). Having tried to talk with some of the objectors several thing have become clear.

Firstly that they don't like the use of any form of evidence, they object to the idea that nearly half the population of Edinburgh doesn't access to a car. Totally rejecting the evidence from census data and the annual government surveys (which also show that car ownership in Edinburgh is currently declining opposite the tread across Scotland as a whole). They assume that because they have a car (one guy told me he had five) therefore everyone must have a car. They also estimated that car ownership was between 80% and 90% of all households (which would be a greater rate than anywhere in Scotland). Nor do they like documented case studies, mainly because they don't seem to able to find find any to support their claims.

Secondly, they can't conceive of cycling as transport, even though they complain about cycle commuters. If asked they will often admit to cycling to school as children, but then say that it is not possible now as it is too dangerous. This while simultaneously deliberately blocking measures to make it safer for kids to ride to school.

Thirdly, cyclists are seen as outsiders and not people from within their communities, this is really odd. I have a friend who has lived all her 30 years in that part of Edinburgh, but has been told that she is wrong for expressing support of the cycle route on the grounds that she lives half a mile up the road and therefore is not from that area.

This seems to be an anglophone thing, when I go to the mainland of Europe (mostly Austria, Germany and Switzerland) cycling is booming, with people of all ages using bikes as everyday transport. New cycle infrastructure popping up all over the place. Why is it working there and not here?

Thanks for your comment. You are exactly right that people tend to assume everyone else is like them. That's precisely why it's vital that cycle campaigners try to think from the point of view of someone else. I've heard very similar arguments about cycle provision in New York and in London. "This is for outsiders, not the kind of folk who live round here" is a peculiarly frustrating, common argument. I suspect these arguments are common in the Anglophone world because many of these countries share a general scepticism about idealism and the idea that governments should change things for an ideological purpose. This has, I suppose, some upsides in the form of the Anglophone countries' deeply-rooted democratic instincts and resistance to extremism. But it can be hard to get past.

I would say only that persistent argument based on calmly-presented facts does sometimes eventually prevail and I very much hope that the east-west cycle route does win approval.

The problem with trying to get across the case for cycling is that there is a cluster bomb of erroneous responses which are repeated ad nauseam, usually in very dismissive or abusive terms. So much time is spent arguing about road tax for example that the fundamental case can never adequately be made. This is the reason that direct action is almost always a fundamental requirement in order to bring about change.

Thank you for your comment (presuming you're not the Anonymous who insulted me elsewhere on this thread).

I will say only that I think when people are repeatedly confronted about the fallaciousness of their arguments they eventually give up. I think I'm detecting, for example, fewer "cyclists don't stop at red lights" arguments. It is possible, with persistence, to wear people out.

You are right to point out that making various logical arguments isn't going to help. But people who spit and yell about road tax aren't going to change their mind even if you point out, as you suggest, that the taxes they do pay do not cover the cost of driving. And so on.

This is politics, not a logical debate. That's how it goes. I wish it weren't thus, but in order to protect things that are logical, sensible, even ethical and moral, we must continue to organise politically and maintain those coalitions. Thankfully, quite a lot has been achieved, it's important though not to forget.

In the age of Trump and Brexit more people are starting to claim that we're living in a "post-fact" world. That's not quite right: we have always been living in a "post-fact" world, but perhaps it has never been so clear as it is now.

Thanks for the comment. In my adult life, I've lived in the UK, Hungary and the United States and I don't entirely share your pessimism about debate in the UK. People certainly spout nonsense - and I wrote this post in the hope that more of my fellow cyclists would repent of this habit. But actual policy facts still ultimately play a role in the UK and they contribute to the long-term direction of policy. Bad arguments suffer in the long run. The foolish decision to leave the EU stands out as a rare UK policy decision that is entirely without any rational basis.

I'm a long-standing (long-riding) cyclist who's never been a car driver, even after inconveniently moving to the countryside many years ago (no one else in the family drives either). I dislike car and van drivers immensely, because they often seem determined to kill me or each other. But I also dislike cycling campaigners for all the reasons you outline here. Even on the roads they quite frequently seem determined to embarrass themselves at best and at worst endanger themselves or other road users (including pedestrians). If only everyone could be nicer towards other people, show more consideration; and above all - and this applies to sometime cyclists too - stop driving absolutely everywhere! You don't have to go everywhere, all the time, to have an agreeable life: in fact, your life would probably be less stressful if you just stayed home more or went out locally, for a walk or to a friend's house, or to the shops...ON FOOT. Or cycling.

Thank for your comment. Like you, I've never owned a car, although I do know how to drive.

I'm glad you enjoyed what I wrote but I'm always a little cautious about criticising other cyclists or pedestrians or about calling on everyone to do their part for safety. It's pretty clear to me that vulnerable road users are all fighting over the scraps left over in auto-dominated spaces. We should be focusing our criticism on drivers, who create much the most danger. I addressed this question in a past blogpost: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/garden-bridge-government-agrees-to-fund-project-despite-warning-over-value-for-money-a3365931.html

Anonymous says: "But I also dislike cycling campaigners for all the reasons you outline here. Even on the roads they quite frequently seem determined to embarrass themselves at best and at worst endanger themselves or other road users (including pedestrians)." How do you know that the people you see riding in ways you disapprove of are "cycling campaigners" and not just other, non-campaigning, persons of bikes?

I suppose that when one's on a bike one can recognise people and one might even know who the local campaigners are. But I'm just guessing.

Meanwhile, I note that I've linked to the wrong thing in my earlier comment. I meant to link to this past post: http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/a-jersey-city-leaflet-east-new-york.html

"You don't have to go everywhere, all the time to have an agreeable life. In fact, your life would probably be less stressful if you just stayed home more or went out locally, for a walk or to a friends house, or to the shops...ON FOOT!"

Good point! Personally I've never understood why people are always running around all over the place, constantly taking up space and getting in the way. Why so many people don't simply stay at home, mind their own business, and figure out how to take care of their own lives for a change.

And, too, I also think most drivers are too aggressive and "have too much command over" the general physical environment.

"Strong campaigns stay strong when they have a strong message of common good which is squarely aimed at the people who can practically do something about it"https://katsdekker.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/alarm-bells-marginalisation-ahead/

I'm pretty sure that yelling is useless, but I'm not much of a fan of anything close to #bothsides. Where we're at now in the US and UK is at a distinctly suboptimal local maximum, pushed by the auto/oil industry and reinforced by a system of tax and zoning codes and laws supported by that industry and everyone's love of the last-few-decades status quo.

Because it's a local maximum, lots of people think it's the best of all possible worlds, and for someone living in a near-Gulf (of Mexico) suburb (new construction, long commutes, wide roads, and also summer heat and humidity) it would be very costly to move away from it to a better place (it would require literally moving, most likely -- the story I heard was that before air conditioning, a British Embassy posting to Houston came with tropical hazard pay. There are people who bike in Houston summers, and I was one of them once, and it's much more difficult than biking in the Northeast).

But for decent-sized-population chunks of the rest of the country it would not require such a change, and I'd like to see it happen. Massachusetts is smaller and more populous than Denmark. Metro NYC is smaller and more populous (and wealthier by far) than the Netherlands. London and New York City are both obvious places to devote a nice fraction of transportation space to safe cycling, if only because of how their density magnifies all the costs of driving (noise, risk/delay-to-pedestrians, particulate pollution) and because of the actual superior time-and-space efficiency of cycling relative to congested traffic flow.

I have never once considered or heard anyone else consider at any publication where I've worked who the advertisers are. In my recent posting in New York, I spent a lot of time over the last year writing very damaging stories about Volkswagen. I assume that VW is a significant advertiser for many news organisations. I don't think that held back anyone's reporting on the emissions scandal. Clearly, the opportunity to attract advertising does encourage newspapers to run motoring sections, often at weekends. But the car reviews are generally not the work of the reporters.

The point people who haven't worked for newspapers don't get is that it is catastrophic when newspapers are seen as serving advertisers rather than readers. Advertisers are buying the right to have their messages appear in a publication that readers trust. If publications start putting advertisers' interests before those of readers, that process breaks down.

So how, exactly, do you propose cyclists change the conversation? More and more, parallels to previous civil rights battles are popping up. People without motors have at least as much right to the roads as those that operate deadly vehicles. We need to stop the presumption that speed to get from place to place trumps the protection from getting assaulted by people operating two ton speeders.

Back in the day popular opinion favored smokers and people that discriminated against gays. Yes, the conversation DOES need to change. It needs to stop being acceptable to offend against road users that don't use expensive vehicles.

I guess my fundamental point is that campaigners are far more likely to get somewhere if they address the point directly and accept points of the world that people actually recognise, rather than deploying "gotcha" arguments and arguments that play well with fellow cyclists (and even on those darn cycling blogs!) People do make such arguments - about the cost-effectiveness of cycling, for example - a bit. But they get diluted with far less effective stuff.

You're absolutely right that this is a case where attitudes need to change. I'm confident that, as in previous struggles, the case for walking and cycling will prevail. But it will prevail more quickly if people try a little harder to present the world as their opponents might at least slightly recognise it.

Could you imagine if someone said they disliked all gay people or all coloured people in the same way that people said on this thread they dislike all car drivers or can drivers. It is antagonistic and rather a silly thing to say about a whole group of people.

It is statements like this that just create a segregation between two sections rather than try and bring people together to show we could if we wanted to be both, or if not at least tolerate each others choose mode of transport.

Thanks for your comment but I find it a little baffling. I don't see any comments on here suggesting that anyone dislikes all car drivers. Many of us are, obviously, sceptical of the dominant role that the motor vehicle has played in public space on both sides of the Atlantic. But I see no comments criticising all drivers in general.

The other problem with your comment is your crass conflation of the struggles of gay people and black people against discrimination with the problems of motor vehicle drivers. First of all, drivers are pretty obviously a dominant group in most western societies who've had enormous advantages. That's not at all the position of the groups you've mentioned.

But the other point is that it's simply untenable to say that people who are defined by the transport mode they use face similar discrimination to the pervasive hate and disadvantage that black people and gay people have faced over the years. I've been clear and consistent on that point on this blog, including when it comes to cyclists. I've argued in the past - http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/a-ride-past-city-hall-rally-and-why-i.html - that the struggle to assert cyclists' rights in cities has some similarities to other battles for civil rights. But I also recognise, crucially, a huge difference. I can lock up my bike, walk away and enjoy all the advantages of a well-off, middle-aged white male. You can do precisely the same and escape whatever discrimination you imagine you face as a driver. Our black and gay friends and neighbours have no such option.

Thanks for an interesting & thoughtful blog posting which makes some useful points. I do, however, have some disagreements with the arguments put forward.

Robert says, “the cycling sceptics and supporters seem as incapable of meaningful communication as the two groups shouting at each other last Saturday morning. … My mind turned, as I rode home from Swiss Cottage, to whether there is some way to narrow this currently apparently unbridgeable divide. ... the response from many cycling advocates could be calculated to heighten the irritation, rather than calming it.”

I think Robert here misses a key point. Demo and counter-demo are not really about convincing one another, but at influencing decision makers and lookers on that your case is well supported and popular. The demo’s message is not aimed at the committed antis.

The cyclist’s demo was called to demonstrate (in two senses of the word) that the anti-CS11 claim (that “residents” oppose the unreasonable demands of a small, cliquish minority of selfish cyclists) was wrong and that as many people, many of them local, support the scheme as are motivated to oppose it.

The reason for this is that the demo aims to show decision-makers that they should not imagine that a decision to reject CS11 would be a sure vote winner.

It is unlikely in the extreme that any of the committed anti-CS11 campaigners can be persuaded to change their mind.

I take as an example the history of the Flat Earth movement. Decades of scientific evidence, experiments and rational explanation could not shift the beliefs of the adherents of planoterrestrialism. Well-funded organizations conducted continuous propaganda rather like present day creationist & climate change scepticism.

However, the entire Flat Earth edifice came crashing to the ground after the publication of the famous photo of a blue planet taken from space. Here at last was the sort of evidence that even the most committed instantly knew disproved their deep beliefs.

There is no point in trying to convince the committed CS11 clique. However, what we do need to make our case is to persuade authorities to install safe cycle space that results in irrefutable evidence that all ages, genders, body shapes can and will cycle on. Lots of ordinary people cycling will be our photo of the planet.

We need to appeal not to the committed antis, but to the non-committed, those open to argument because they can see that they or their family members would be prepared to cycle on good, safe infrastructure and to build up political and lobbying power step by step. We can construct a world in which there is room for cycling to grow. That is what matters, not winning over the unwinnable.

When campaigning, now nearly two decades ago, for the Royal College St & Tavistock Places schemes, I recall getting two classes of response. One was most concisely expressed by the then London Cycling Officer who said that there would be no demand (oh, so, so wrong he has proven to be!). The other was people, not just from cycling organizations but from within organizations within London such as TfL and who didn’t cycle, but said in effect, “that’s what would get me cycling.”

So, I’m not too worried even if Robert’s complaints were fair and reasonable (though I must add they are a bit one-sided, picking up only bad practices and not giving examples of any good campaigning messages). It is important to understand who your audience is and to target your messages to that audience and not to waste too much time trying to convert the unconvertible.

I'm sorry if you thought the blog was one-sided. There are obviously plenty of good campaigning messages. That's not really the point of this blog, though. Its mission is to provide well-written essays making arguments on the moral philosophy of issues around road use. The point of this one - which I hope came across - was to point out that many of the current messages sound great to the already-converted within an echo chamber but sound less good outside it. I think it's important for people to think about that point and try to address it. I recognise that the purpose of both CS11 demonstrations was to influence decision-makers. That's why I cycled all the way from Brixton to participate. I suppose it's inevitable that the scenes one ends up perhaps slightly distorting the scenes one describes when setting up these essays. I hope, however, that serious offence was avoided.

It is true that some bike lanes are underused and we should admit it, even as we hope that usage will increase when the bike network becomes better connected and people become more comfortable with it.

That said, I would hope that discussion of "empty" bike lanes be based on traffic counts and not just subjective impressions of emptiness. I've noticed that bike lanes look much "emptier" than they truly are on a per-vehicle basis, due to the small size of bikes compared to cars.

One day I was sitting waiting for the bus on Central Park West, in NYC. The bike lane looked much emptier than the car lanes, as usual, so I figured I would pass the time by conducting an informal traffic count which lasted maybe 15 min. I don't remember the exact count, but I was surprised to find that it was nearly a 50-50 split! As you know very well, cyclists can be "invisible". :-)

Another day I was stopped at a red light in SoHo, on a block clogged with cars. There were four or so other cyclists waiting for me at the intersection. I decided to count how many cars were stopped at the same light, and to my surprise again, the number was about the same! The only difference is that the cars filled the entire block and looked like congestion (it was a short, one-lane block), while the cyclists were barely noticeable, all together taking less space than the first car.

I'm not saying that my two anecdotal counts are accurate measurements of anything; only that they made me realize that the huge size difference of cars vs bikes can produce, at least on me, a powerful "optical illusion".

Count-down walk signals help with this, because one lane of cars maxes out at about one car every two seconds. 10 bikes waiting at a 20-second light means at least 50% bikes. Videos from London's new cycle tracks show 1.5 bikes per second, or 3x the car rate in a skinnier lane.

Riding through a suburb on my old commute, I once did the exercise of counting cars passed vs cars passing me, and discovered that I passed a mere 64 (seemed like many more) but in the later part only 30-some passed me before the town line. This was a surprise to me, and I bet I'm not the only person not expecting this.

So, then to prevent people in cars from seeing what they perceive to be an empty cycle lane, we should block their vision from seeing it.This might be one of the reasons that car parking protected bike lanes don't have much opposition. I had assumed that it was because parking spots weren't lost but maybe this visual blocking effect has something to do with it as well.I wonder if a cycle lane was on the other side of some trees and grassy strip it would be considered to not be part of the road and therefore not a threat.Just speculating. It would be good to have people psychoanalyzed to figure out just what it is that they don't like.

About Me

I'm a hefty, 6ft 5in Scot. I moved back to London in 2016 after four years of living and cycling in New York City. Despite my size, I have a nearly infallible method of making myself invisible. I put on an eye-catching helmet, pull on a high visibility jacket, reflective wristbands and trouser straps, get on a light blue touring bicycle and head off down the road. I'm suddenly so hard to see that two drivers have knocked me off because, they said, they didn't see me.
This blog is an effort to explain to some of the impatient motorists stuck behind me, puzzled friends and colleagues and - perhaps most of all myself - why being a cyclist has become almost as important a part of my identity as far more important things - my role as a husband, father, Christian and journalist. It seeks to do so by applying the principles of moral philosophy - which I studied for a year at university - and other intellectual disciplines to how I behave on my bike and how everyone uses roads.